


flat tire

by viscrael



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Car Troubles, Confessions, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, gratuitous descriptions of car related things brought to u by: wikihow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 16:23:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13744770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: “Honda,” he said, hesitating.Honda must have heard the concern. He paused in the middle of pulling the spare tire out of its spot in the trunk and turned to Jounouchi. With the flashlight unintentionally focused in his direction, Jounouchi could see Honda’s expression—eyebrow raised, mouth straight, waiting for whatever it was.Jounouchi paused. He opened his mouth, but discovered it was a lot more difficult to speak than he’d anticipated.“Don’t tell me.” Honda’s face dropped. Somehow he always knew what Jounouchi was going to say, even before he said it, even if he didn’t know how to say it. “You don’t know how to change a tire.”





	flat tire

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i love these boys. i got a prompt a while back of joey catching feelings for his best bud but i didnt do anything with it until now bc i wasnt sure how to go abt writing it :o but its here! i spit out a fic for the first time in forever hooo boy
> 
> sorry for any ooc-ness, ive never written honda or the two of them interacting before hhhhn
> 
> its 1 am as i post this pls excuse typos

“What was that?”

Jounouchi didn’t look away from the road, but he heard the frown in Honda’s voice at the question. He admitted, “I don’t know. It’s probably fine.”

“That didn’t _sound_ fine.”

“Okay, what, you want me to pull over?”

“More than I want you to get us in a wreck.”

Jounouchi mumbled, “There’s not even anyone around,” but listened anyway. He didn’t bother flipping his turn signal on before pulling over to the side of the road. The street was desolate, and it had been like that the entirety of the twenty minutes since they left Anzu’s place. It wasn’t even that late—just barely brushing past ten when they got in the car—but Jounouchi guessed this part of town wasn’t popping off on Monday nights all that often.

Not that he could blame anyone. He wouldn’t be driving on a weekday at this time if he could help it either, but Anzu’s birthday coincided with the rare long weekend their school system graciously gave them, so she’d chosen to have her party tonight. It was a small event that consisted of their normal group and a few of Anzu’s friends that Jounouchi liked well enough—at the very least, they were nice, even if they didn’t really seem to get on with anyone but Anzu—hosted at her place. It was an alright party. Not their best, but she had fun, which he guessed was all that mattered.

The two of them stayed on the side of the road with the car still on for a good minute or so, sitting in dead silence, while Jounouchi tried to gather the energy to deal with whatever damage had been inflicted. He was used to his car making weird noises, but this particular one was a lot more concerning than usual. Honda had probably been right to ask they pull over and check it out. Jounouchi just wished he hadn’t.

“Alright,” he mumbled, finally pulling the key out of the ignition and opening the driver’s side door.

Honda climbed out of the passenger side and followed Jounouchi without being asked, which left Jounouchi feeling somehow both thankful and irritated. He kept distance between them even as he bent down to get a closer look at the front right tire, Honda following suit. They used the light on Honda’s phone to look.

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Honda agreed. From the corner of his eye Jounouchi saw him run a hand through his hair, a sure sign of stress. Jounouchi could acutely relate. Honda stood back up. “You have a spare in your trunk, right?”

Jounouchi nodded. “I should.”

“Pop it.”

“What, the trunk?”

“What else?”

He frowned and stood up. “I don’t know, I was just makin’ sure! You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

“I’m not being a dick,” Honda argued, already making his way to the back of the car. Jounouchi had to open the driver’s door to unlock the trunk, so he sat back down in the driver’s seat. From his spot staring at the wheel, he heard Honda yell out, “You got a flashlight I can use?”

“In the glove compartment.”

“Get it.”

“You can say please, ya know!” Jounouchi called, even as he was reaching over to the passenger side. Underneath his insurance information and his car’s registration, he found the flashlight, a little beaten up and a lot old but still functional, so he considered that a win. He got back out, leaving the driver’s door open.

“What is with you tonight?” Honda said, more of a complaint than a question, as Jounouchi handed the flashlight over. With that in hand, he turned his phone’s light off and slid it into his back pocket. Jounouchi watched the action—well, “watched” as best as he could in the near complete darkness. With the streetlights mostly obscured by trees, only the portions of the trunk Honda focused the flashlight on were visible, so it was more of a vague outline of motion that Jounouchi followed. But he’d seen Honda do it enough times that he could visualize the fluidity of the movement, the camo phone case Jounouchi half-jokingly-half-sincerely bought him last year, the dark jeans he wore with almost every outfit that wasn’t their school uniform. He didn’t need to see it to know it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled, pulling his eyes up from Honda’s back pockets and to the trunk again. Honda picked up a jack and wrench (both of which Jounouchi hadn’t realized he had back there) and handed them to Jounouchi, who faltered before taking them.

“Honda,” he said, hesitating.

Honda must have heard the concern. He paused in the middle of pulling the spare tire out of its spot in the trunk and turned to Jounouchi. With the flashlight unintentionally focused in his direction, Jounouchi could see Honda’s expression—eyebrow raised, mouth straight, waiting for whatever it was.

Jounouchi paused. He opened his mouth, but discovered it was a lot more difficult to speak than he’d anticipated.

“Don’t tell me.” Honda’s face dropped. Somehow he always knew what Jounouchi was going to say, even before he said it, even if he didn’t know _how_ to say it. “You don’t know how to change a tire.”

“I—wasn’t ever taught!” Jounouchi jumped to defend himself, his face burning. It shouldn’t have been embarrassing, admitting this to his best friend. It wasn’t like Honda didn’t make fun of him much more for much less on a daily basis, and it wasn’t like this was even that big of a deal. But for some reason, this was one of the more embarrassing things to admit. “I only started driving a year ago, and it’s not like I had someone there to teach me—”

“Well, you’re gonna learn,” Honda interrupted, apparently finished with letting Jounouchi flounder for an explanation. He reached his hands out and settled them on Jounouchi’s, who realized a moment too late that he was being asked to give over the jack and wrench again. Honda’s hands were surprisingly cold. Or maybe they just felt that way against mid-August air. He let the tools go after a second, but if Honda noticed anything weird about the second they stood touching, he didn’t comment on it.

“Go put the parking brake on while I get the tire out,” Honda instructed.

Jounouchi, surprisingly, did as he was told. As he was turning the car on again and Honda was moving the tire out of the trunk, Honda said, “And don’t lie. You know that doesn’t work on me.”

“What?”

He was at Jounouchi’s open door suddenly, leaning his arm over the top of the car, flashlight still on in his hand. “Turn the car off again and come out here and help me take off the hubcap. Also, I used the weights you were keeping back there to keep the wheel in place. And I mean don’t lie about what is and isn’t going on with you. Just saying ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ when you obviously do…” He trailed off, apparently unable to find an end to that statement, and pushed away from the car so he could return to the task at hand.

Jounouchi went through the motions of turning his car off again before getting out and following Honda to the right side. As he did what was asked of him, he said, “It’s not a lie if I really don’t know. ‘S not my fault if you’re readin’ too much into stuff.”

“But I’m not,” Honda protested. He handed the wrench over to Jounouchi again. “Loosen the nuts, by the way. Counterclockwise.”

“What, with the wrench?”

“ _Yes_ , with the wrench, what else?”

“Jesus, I don’t know! I don’t know much about these things, okay? Sorry my specialty’s _dueling_ and not automobile shit like you,” he mumbled.

“See? This is what I’m talking about.”

“For fuck’s sake, Honda, nothing is wrong with me!”

While they talked, Jounouchi had slipped the wrench over one of the lug nuts and turned counterclockwise, straining to loosen it, and he got the first one free as silence followed his words. He didn’t look up from the wheel. Whatever plausible deniability he’d had went out the window the moment he raised his voice. Jounouchi was known to yell unintentionally, but never like _that_. Never with genuine panic, genuine fear.

And of course Honda knew exactly what that meant.

A hand landed on Jounouchi’s shoulder, but before Honda could even finish his sympathetic _Jou_ , Jounouchi had flinched away. He winced at his own reaction.

Honda was silent for a long moment. For as long as it took Jounouchi to get the rest of the lug nuts free, actually, and long enough even to raise the jack and slip the old tire off. Jounouchi didn’t look up as he let Honda slide the new tire into place, as he put the lug nuts back on and tightened them by hand, as the car was lowered.

Honda was putting the hubcap back in place when he finally said, “You’ve been acting weird for weeks now.”

Jounouchi winced a second time. Even without Honda looking at him, he felt some kind of shame, some kind of embarrassment. It wasn’t the same kind as earlier, as realizing he was clueless on something his best friend was an expert on; it was the kind experienced from being called out by the one person you want—need, sometimes—not to notice.

“We’re best friends, asshole,” Honda said. “You think I just wouldn’t notice when you stopped hanging out with us as a group? Or, like, tonight, I wouldn’t notice how much you _didn’t_ want to have to give me a ride home?”

“That’s not—”

“I’m not stupid, Jou. I’m not asking you to explain whatever nonsense is running through your head all the sudden. I’m just asking that you don’t treat me like an idiot.” He stood up, his back to Jounouchi, and carried the old tire to the trunk. The flashlight danced light across the side of the car from its position stuffed in his jacket’s pocket. Jounouchi watched him disappear behind the car, heard it creak as the weight of the old tire settled into the trunk. He got into the driver’s seat again.

With the car on, the headlights shone onto the grass in front of them, patches of dark green illuminated. Jounouchi felt Honda slide into the passenger seat, heard the car door shut—felt it shake the car’s frame, even though it hadn’t been slammed—and still watched the grass swaying gently in what little wind blew past them. He studied it.

Honda opened his mouth. “Aren’t you going to start the—”

“I think I like you.”

The sentence died in Honda’s throat. Jounouchi spit his own out quicker than he could think them.

“I know I’ve been actin’ really weird and I’ve been distant lately and kind of snappy and mean and I knew you caught on, but I thought if I just waited it out it would work, ya know, like I thought maybe I was feelin’ that way because I was spendin’ too much time with ya—that maybe that was why I started feelin’ stupid around you—don’t say anything about that—”

“Jou—”

“I mean stupider than usual—like _crush_ -stupid, like you used to get around Miho, so if I stopped hangin’ out with you every day it would sort of die down and go away on its own? Only that didn’t actually end up doing anything, I still feel the same way and I’m still actin’ like an idiot around you and it’s just made it worse ‘cause now I’m even tellin’ you in the first place—”

“ _Jounouchi_!”

He stopped, more because he was out of breath than because of anything Honda said. When there came no immediate comment from Honda to interrupt him, he finished, “So…there, _that’s_ what’s up with me. Are you happy now?”

Out of sick curiosity, Jounouchi looked over to the passenger side for the first time since he’d started this poorly-formed confession. Honda looked like he was debating something, but his expression was mostly unreadable, even in the light.

He answered, “No.”

Jounouchi’s brain might have stopped. “What?”

“I’m not happy now.”

At that, it started up again, sparked back from its anxiety-frozen state into anger. “So, what, I’m just gonna sit here and make a fuckin’— _idiot_ of myself, sayin’ all this humiliating bullshit, and you’re not even gonna be happy with that—”

“It’s not with what you _said_ ,” Honda continued. “I’m not happy with what you _did._ What the fuck did you think ignoring me for weeks on end without explanation was going to do? And what were you going to do if it never went away? Just stop being friends with me? When we’ve known each other this long? You were just going to ditch me because you started feeling different?”

Jounouchi wanted to scream that it wasn’t just because the feelings were _different_ ; it was because they were so _much_. He wanted to say that Honda didn’t get it, that if he had been in Jounouchi’s shoes—if he felt the way he did about his best friend every second of every day; if he found his own chest filled with warmth, and dread, and a lightness like he’d swallowed air, or maybe the sun, and then again with a crushing weight that he didn’t _have_ anything, he only _wanted_ it; if his own breath caught in his throat any time this best friend stepped into the right angle, or posted a particularly good selfie on Instagram, or laughed louder than usual, or said something with a fondness that could only signal home; if he thought about the missing touch of someone else and imagined his best friend there instead of only a faceless stranger like usual; if he accidentally daydreamed a relationship into existence when he wasn’t looking—if he was catching feelings quicker than he could stomp them out—

_Then_ he’d understand.   

But Jounouchi didn’t scream that, or even say it. He just looked at Honda, who had somehow caught his gaze and refused to let it go ever since he’d chanced a look over.

“You didn’t even bother asking how I feel about all this,” Honda said.

“I already know how you feel—”

Jounouchi was interrupted by Honda’s lips on his.

The kiss lasted one, two, three, four seconds. A small thing that gave way to much bigger.

Honda pulled away, no doubt to gloat that Jounouchi had been wrong in assuming another person’s feelings, but Jounouchi didn’t give him the time to speak before he was pulled into another kiss, this one deeper, more intentional, more _sure_. Honda kissed like he wasn’t used to it yet and didn’t taste like much but chapped lips and, well, mouth, but Jounouchi found that he still liked it, enough so that he pulled Honda back into a third. But the fourth and fifth were all Honda’s doing.

And if he got Honda home an hour later than expected…

Jounouchi blamed it on the flat tire. 


End file.
